cakes

Friday night my siblings and I hosted a party at my brother’s place in honour of our parents’ 50th wedding anniversary. Tents were put up in the backyard, complete with white twinkle lights, tables and chairs. The caterers produced a fabulous feast and one sister ordered a gorgeous cake from the Bon Bon Bakery. Another sister put together an amazing book of memories that most members of the family had written for the occasion.

I spent quite a while putting together a slideshow of their wedding photos and pictures from the following 50 years – including many of us kids as we grew. I’m just putting a few on here as there were almost 120 pages in the slideshow!

I take it all back! Not only did I survive the weekend of kiddie parties, including hosting one with 10 Kindergarteners and 5 other kids of various ages, but I made 3 (almost identical) cards and finished two books. Granted, I started Lawrence Hill’s The Book of Negroes on Tuesday and finished it Saturday evening and the other book was the teen novel When Lightning Strikes by Meg Cabot, but clearly there was some me time.

The cards I made were pretty easy to put together but as they are spinners cards, they never fail to impress the kids. Heather asked that I give her the third one. Like what you see? Let me know.

So, the party was controlled chaos. I’m a firm believer in limiting the uselessness of goody bags and keeping the kids busy. At our parties, the kids make crafts and that becomes the main part of the goody bag. Add a granola bar or rice crispy square and a couple of fruit leathers and voila, you are done!

Yesterday, the kids decorated picture frames with sequins, buttons, stickers and whatever they could grab. Once that was done, I snapped a shot of each kid with the birthday girl and printed it off on our fabulous compact photo printer. Then the photo was put into the frame as an instant memento. Later the kids decorated their own goody bags. I found some great coloured paper bags on the cheap and again let them loose with the glue, stickers, buttons, brads, papers and sequins. One of the Kindergarten girls did such a bang up job that I thought my 12-year-old niece had made it!! That’s high praise ’cause my niece is an amazing crafter.

A baker I am not, so do not submit this picture to http://www.cakewrecks.blogspot.com/ Heather’s class is working on a teddy bear theme for the next two weeks so the day before her party she asked for a teddy bear cake. Here is what I came up with! No comments about pink goo and leakage please – it’s supposed to be a six – not pink diarrhea.